Technical writing in today’s world is challenge filled. Writers need to adopt different methods to neutralize this and also adapt themselves to tackle these challenges. Some of the challenges that today’s technical writers would come across are:
1. Writing to a wide range audience
This is a major challenge when you are writing for end users. Users can be broadly classified into end users and expert users. The knowledge level of the expert users is predictable as they are the ones who build, support and get intimate with a product. End users are the ones for whom the product is actually made for. Their knowledge level can vary from very low to moderate.
When writing a document for end users, it would be helpful if you could perform a quick audience analysis. But, this is not done in most cases due to the time and effort constraints of the project. Then, there is always a tendency to consider the average knowledge level of the users. Although this may sound harmless, you may miss some basic things in the document that a user with very low knowledge level might need.
To be on the safer side, when writing for end users with a wide knowledge level range, it is good to provide all basic information. And, you can provide ‘skip this step’ instructions for the users with moderate knowledge level.
2. Working as a sole technical writer
In today’s economic conditions when many companies are looking for cost cuts, documentation teams are always prone to these cuts, limiting the writers in many small and medium sized companies to one. Working as a ‘one man army’ has its own up and down sides. While the positives are like document style consistency and opportunity to get involved fully in the document life cycle, negatives are many. Document quality might be compromised without adequate peer review, work sharing and shortage of ideas.
Getting the document reviewed by somebody other than the author becomes a challenge, which has to be met by performing additional reviews and request for reviews by the manager or someone in the technical team, if it is possible.
When there are bottlenecks with some tools or methods used, you can always take the help of experts through web forums.
3. Gaining adequate product knowledge
Even though technical writers are expected to have good knowledge regarding a product which is to be documented they do not always get formal product briefings and may not be involved in the product development discussions.
In such situations you are compelled to do your own research of the product by reading the existing product design and development documents and scheduling interviews with the product manager or the members of the development team. These documents and interviews will help you gain more insight of the product even if you are given a formal product briefing.
4. Mastering new documentation tools
Whenever there is a transition of documentation methodology or tool there is need to learn the new concepts. This can be difficult when there is no formal training for the new tool.
You have to spend a good deal of time playing around with the new tool, reading the help file and start doing small trial projects to test the things learned. You can collaborate with the team by dividing tasks and consult experts through web for things that are not resolved.
5. Gathering information from remote SMEs
Gathering information from subject matter experts working in a remote location can become troublesome. Interviewing a person through chat or email and getting the right information required is a difficult task to do.
For this, you can do a bit of research and gather maximum knowledge regarding the topics to be discussed with the remote SME and frame an organized question set. A well prepared question set will ensure that you will not miss out any information. Always conduct the interview topic by topic, record or take a quick note of the points if it is telephone conversation. Provide extra material like a screenshot or a text reference for the SME when you want clarifications.
6. Being more than a technical writer
As many companies do not keep a proper job distinction between content writing, technical writing, instructional designing, graphic designing … often technical writers will be compelled to wear one or more of these hats.
It is all personal choice and flair to do a specific role or perform multiple responsibilities. But, when the situation demands you might have to perform different roles and being proficient in a couple of these roles will only do good for you.
Along with the writing skills, improving your graphics editing, video editing, story boarding skills and if you can stretch your limits, a bit of coding and testing skills can place you very high in the job market.
